Murray Sayle

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM JAPAN about the imperial dynasty… Mentions Princess Masako's recent miscarriage… The institution of monarchy is often viewed as outmoded and undemocratic, a dying tradition trapped between the circulation-hungry media and the tendency of its younger members to behave in ways that make them dubious moral role models. Its function, in most countries, seems ornamental at best, without political significance, beyond, perhaps, a vague tilt to the traditional right. In Japan, the situation is reversed. No breath of sexual scandal has, in living memory, touched any member of the royal family. The domestic lives of the present Emperor Akihito and the much-admired Empress Michiko have been exemplary, and Japan’s royal family regularly scores approval ratings of anywhere from sixty to seventy per cent and up in polls in which the present Japanese Cabinet’s support recently sank to nineteen per cent… Describes their up-and-down courtship, and Prince Naruhito's insistence on marrying Masako Owada despite her hesitancy… Describes the history of the dynasty…The country has enjoyed an all but unbroken male succession of more than fifteen centuries, with the throne passing almost mechanically from father to son ever since there was an emperor in Rome… Under pressure from America, Emperor Hirohito renounced his claim to divinity after the Second World War… Because of their pacifist views, the royal family is widely seen as a safeguard for Japan's fragile and imperfect democracy… Mentions the daughters of Prince Aya, (Crown Prince Naruhito's brother) in a discussion of the barriers to naming an Empress, and quotes Princess Masako's haiku in the Imperial Poetry Contest.

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM JAPAN about a mass poisoning at a small Japanese village's spring festival, as well as the drawn-out investigation and sensational trial that followed… Describes the village of Sonobe, and the wealthy lifestyle of the accused, Masumi Hayashi… Seventy people were affected by the poisoning, and four died… She is now being held in solitary confinement in Wakayama, where she is on trial for four murders, more than sixty attempted murders, and multiple insurance frauds. … Mrs. Hayashi is, in effect, accused of poisoning not only them but also the national ideal of a trusting, cooperating community… Tells about her early life… She married an older man after he divorced… Traditional Japanese cannot understand why a young woman with a promising career ahead of her would choose to marry an exterminator, an occupation they associate with the despised hereditary trade of ratcatcher. But the unlikely couple seem to have shared an outlook that many Japanese think of as Western: they saw life as a game to be won rather than as a set of strict Confucian rules to be followed… For many years, Sonobe, which means “garden plot,” had been a nondescript, run-down farming village set among rice fields. But in Japan’s bubble economy of the late eighties the village was completely rebuilt, as farmers sold off part of their land to developers and built new, larger houses for themselves with the profits—and commuters with high-paying jobs in Wakayama City moved in. … Shop signs in English, a sure sign of new wealth in Japan, are everywhere… Describes Mrs. Hayashi's career as an insurance agent, a common work choice for women in Japan, and her husband’s role as a mah-jong gambler… Whatever the motive for the poisonings, it cannot have been to get rich… Japan’s life-insurance industry is by far the wealthiest in the world—the average person pays more than three thousand dollars a year on premiums, three times the American level—but Japan’s depressed economy has cut deeply into the companies’ investment returns, and they have been under pressure to sell ever more policies. Describes a bubbly, affable television interview she gave before her arrest, which, when played, was wildly at odds with how she had been demonized in the media… The Japanese, however, have learned to treat an arrest as a conviction. 92.3 per cent of those arrested subsequently confessed—a record that has only been matched, if ever, in totalitarian states. Describes the broad authority to detain suspects as used by police… As a consequence, Japan has very few trial lawyers—proportionately a twentieth as many as the United States—and Japanese judges have the mostly technical task of checking that confessions have been correctly obtained. (Of those who pleaded innocent, only sixty-seven—one in a thousand of those accused—have been acquitted.)…But Masumi refused to confess, which to many Japanese only confirmed her rejection of community values. Her interrogators were baffled. …But even if Masumi is convicted, it will do little to allay the anger and terror that the poisoning and the subway-gas attack have brought to Japan. …As the prosecution outlined its case, a reassuringly traditional Japanese answer emerged: she is different, she is not one of us. Of this, at least, Masumi Hayashi is unquestionably guilty.

ABSTRACT: Talk story about the trial of Buddhist guru Shoko Asahara in Tokyo. All martyrdoms, Oscar Wilde once observed, look mean to the beholder. Oscar's certainly did. But the same can scarcely be said of the near-blind Buddhist guru Shoko Asahara, who is being tried for 17 crimes and is charged with, among other things, murder, attempted murder, and causing serious injury to 3,796 people–victims of last year's nerve-gas attack on the Tokyo subway, which Asahara allegedly ordered… Calling the hearings Japan's O. J. Simpson obsession understates the case;…many Japanese feel that the safety of their social order itself may be on trial. Accordingly, prosecutors have crafted their case with the precision of a Seiko stopwatch… To strip Asahara of religious aura, the presiding judge, Fumihiro Abe, has denied him permission to appear in his purple robe… When, at the opening session, the defendent gave his name as Shoko Asahara, Judge Abe asked, “Isn't your name Chizuo Matsuomoto?” “I have cast that name away,” the guru responded calmly… As the name of every one of his alleged victims in the subway attack was read out–a process that took almost four hours–Asahara was apparently lost in meditation… [The] guru, ignoring the charges, made a three-minute statement in archaic Japanese studded with Buddhist terms. “I will try,” he concluded, “to free humanity of its bondage, pain, and despair. Whatever suffering falls upon me I will bear, with holy love, for you all.” To anyone of Christian background, this has a familiar, not to say blasphemous, ring. In a 1992 book, Asahara claimed to be Christ. The Gospel of St. Mark records that, reminded by Pontius Pilate “how many things they witness against thee… Jesus yet answered nothing: so that Pilate marveled.”… [The] guru is clearly modelling his refusal to defend himself on the trial and condemnation of Jesus… Unknowingly, the prosecutors have helped his tussle for the symbolic ground… The prosecutors have even found Asahara a Judas: Yoshihiro Inoue, 26, a slavish disciple and “intelligence minister,” who has been charged with murder, and who promises to confront his old master in court. “A, thing is not necessarily true,” Oscar Wilde also wrote, “because a man dies for it” The danger is that some gullible Japanese may disagree.

ABSTRACT: A LETTER FROM TOKYO about Japanese guru Shoko Asahara, who faces 25 murder counts, based partly on a nerve-gas attack his followers carried out in Tokyo subways… Tells about the reasons for official reticence in the matter of the cult… The reason lies in the reaction–many now call it overreaction–against Japan's long history of religious persecution, which, as in Europe, extended well into modern times. For 3 centuries, Christians, branded as Western spies, were hunted down and killed, sometimes by crucifixion. Then, the tide of ultra nationalism that culminated in the Second World War, Buddhism was, in turn, denounced as “foreign” (after 1400 years in Japan), and even adherents of some versions of the Japanese folk religion Shinto were persecuted, in order to favor State Shinto, the compulsory cult of the Emperor and his divine ancestors. Buddhism, like Christianity, might well have been forced underground were it not for the fact that Shinto viewed dead bodies as polluting, and so had no rite for burying its faithful. As a result, Japanese Buddhism largely became centered on the immensely profitable funeral business. (Wealthy Buddhist temples are still widely preyed on by the infamous yakuza crime syndicates.) After Japan's defeat, State Shinto was suppressed by the American occupation, and traditional Shinto contracted (at least, in the small village where I live, which is reasonably representative) into a colorful set of folkloric superstitions, with many festivals but no discernible spiritual or pastoral role. One result of this religious decline was a void in the lives of many Japanese–a void that the occupation authorities who drafted Japan's postwar constitution unwittingly helped to deepen. Article 20 guarantees freedom of religion & this clause is interpreted as no interference whatsoever… Describes the Aum's cult's specific parallels with Buddhism Mainstream Buddhists have denounced his teachings as grotesque perversions of their faith. . .

ABSTRACT: Comment about the vote in Quebec on whether or not to claim separate sovereignty and thus break up the Canadian federation. Canada and Canada's smaller neighbor to the south are both to be congratulated–with some reservations–on the vote the other day that barely kept the French-speaking province part of Canada. True, we have recently seen Chechnya, Rwanda, and Bosnia, among other places ending in “a,” fall into chaos and despair. But Canada? Warm-hearted, stable, fair to its many minorities, staunch in the cause of justice and democracy, Canada is one of the world's most highly respected countries. As its Prime Minister, Jean Chretien, told a Montreal rally just before the vote, non-Canadians cannot understand why anyone would want to leave it. Yet a large majority–60%, by some counts–of Mr. Chretien's fellow Quebec-born Francophones voted to do just that. This calls for explanation and, from both Canadians and Americans, understanding. For the short term, however, a disaster has been narrowly averted–a switch of a mere thirty-odd thousand votes would have sent the verdict the other way–and we can all be grateful to those who made the vital difference. President Clinton offered the tactful hope that America would remain partners with a stable and strong–that is, a united–Canada. President Jacques Chirac of France said carefully that France would recognize not an independent Quebec but “the facts”–a pledge that inflamed no one. And a million or more rest-of-Canadians rallied, sent postcards, made telephone calls, or visited Montreal in person, all delivering the same message: they wanted Quebec to stay in the family. Voters were not asked whether they favored a sovereign Quebec, answer Oui or Non. Rather, the ballot informed them that sovereignty was to happen only after “a formal offer…for a new Economic and Political Partnership” had been made to Canada “within the scope of” two further documents–a lengthy list of Quebec's proposals and a political understanding. A Yes win would thus have been no more than a mandate to negotiate. The No voters may have averted instant chaos and a run on the already shaky Canadian dollar. Tells how many of the pure laine French Canadians, with a falling birthrate, see their way of life dying out and have resorted to a 19th century remedy (nationalism) for a 20th century multicultural nation. Few French Canadians dispute the threat to their language and culture. The survival of the French of North America, and of their French, is important to us all, and is, indeed, in line with the goal of benefiting from many cultures. The French Canadians have been the bravest of partners in the shaping of this continent, and of Canada in particular. They merit all the understanding that their fellow Canadians, and the rest of us, have to give.

ABSTRACT: LETTER FROM HIROSHIMA about the end of World War II with Japan and the use of the atomic bomb. Once, like everyone else, I thought that the atomic bombs had caused the surrender. Now I know that they did not. Tells about the Allied policy of firebombing civilians in the war. Dresden–and the very similar fire raid on Tokyo a month later–marked the crossing, concealed from the public, of an invisible moral line. Moral qualms about wiping out whole cities had been overcome half a year before Hiroshima; the only question left was the ethically less troubling one of the method. Japanese & Americans who believed that Hirohito would order a fight to the bitter end were wrong, but only in the last days of the war did a few Americans come to see that Hirohito was the only man who could actually prevent a suicidal last stand, and so save many lives. Over the years, dozens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors have all said the same thing: even after the atomic bombs, they were ready to endure whatever had to be endured at the command of Emperor Hirohito. The Japanese Army unveiled its plans for the final, decisive battle. Japan's principle weapon was to be a national suicide pact–kamikaze planes, crash boats, human torpedoes, mines, and hand-carried anti-tank bombs. Mentions the hard-fought battle of Okinama as an example of Japanese military resolve and as an example of what to expect from an invasion. Some writers have asserted that the Okinawa battle was badly handled by the American side and largely unnecessary, and that all conclusions based on it are suspect. Tells about the complicated maneuvering among the Japanese leaders as to whether to surrender in the early part of 1945 and suggests that the Soviet invasion of Manchuria was what eventually led to the sudden unexpected surrender offer to the U.S. in the days following Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bombs had yet to acquire their reputation as instant war-winners; in fact, American plans called for many more to be used in the planned invasion. Perhaps as many as 2,000 Japanese officers and civilians killed themselves over the next few days–an indication of how comparatively thin the layer of last-ditch ultra-nationalism was when the day of reckoning arrived. Tells about an article defending the use of the atomic bomb by former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson, which had actually been drafted by McGeorge Bundy and scientist James B. Conant. The sequence of events–Hiroshima, Nagasaki, surrender offer–is striking. Could it be that pure coincidence has clouded our understanding of the surrender for half a century? Indeed it could. By themselves, the dates prove nothing. In the decades since, Hiroshima has had to carry the metaphorical weight of the Cold War. It is a heavy load for one unfortunate Japanese seaport to bear.

ABSTRACT: A REPORTER AT LARGE about the downing of KAL 007 by the Soviets. Writer reveals the series of steps which led to the shooting down of the airliner, including the mistakes made by the pilot which sent him over Russian airspace, and the Cold War tensions which led the Soviets to shoot down the plane. Mentions the possibility that the Soviets thought the plane was an American surveillance craft and reveals that the USSR covered up the truth–that the plane was not a spy plane of any sort.

ABSTRACT: OUR FAR-FLUNG CORRESPONDENTS about the engagement of Crown Prince Naruhito of Japan and Masako Owada. The two met in Tokyo on Oct. 18, 1986. The Prince proposed soon after, but was rejected. Masako, educated at Harvard and Oxford, is a successful bureaucrat in the Foreign Ministry, where her father works. Five years later, when it became clear that the Imperial Household Agency could not find an equally suitable candidate, she accepted the Prince's proposal. The Imperial Family, unlike the political establishment, is enormously popular in Japan. Tells about the history of the office of Emperor; the Emperor is not so much king as chief priest, theoretically the direct descendant of Amaterasu Omikami, goddes of the sun and founding deity of the Yamato clan. Prince Naruhito is destined to be the 126th Emperor of Japan. Emperor Akahito and Empress Michiko have established the Imperial Household as a recognizable Japanese family for the first time. Tells about their modest and cultured home life. Naruhito and Masako will wed on June 9th.